Stop Learning CAD First For Only 3D Printing 

I learned Blender for 3d printing and I never looked back, even without CAD sketcher I still think it is a good choice. I am not vendor locked to autodesk, it was absolutely free, the skills I have learned can be used in animations, game development etc. All you really need to know is modifiers like booleans, how to clean a borked mesh and you are good to go. Mocking up and prototyping things in a typical blender workflow is 10-100 times faster and more intuitive than using most CAD suites.

Your excellent tutorials and ability to explain your thoughts while modelling was the reason I got into blender a few weeks ago. Still have a lot of learning to do and watching this video I'm feeling confident I chose the right software and tutor to propel my new 3D printing hobby to the next level while hopefully preparing me for CAD transitioning in my future engineering career.

Bevels and chamfers in Blender are limited only in that overlapping geometry with a bevel makes a mess; to avoid that, you need a lot more work. Bevels are fine as long as they don't lap up against other geometry. Also, other CAD programs really suck at editing existing STLs, while Blender lets you do a limited dissolve and then do anything you want with a much cleaner model. I always point people to your playlists when they ask. You've got the best blender-for-3d-printing tutorials out there.

I love blender. I like FreeCAD. I gave CAD Sketcher a shot and it's very intriguing. I definitely intend to learn more. The single biggest thing that would make the switch over to CAD Sketcher a no-brainer would be the ability to define parameters in a spreadsheet similar to FreeCAD or like Fusion 360's User Parameters. I'm very excited to see how high CAD Sketcher reaches!

I think free and open source was what made me switch. My second project using the free fusion360 I ran into limits of the software not fully utilizing my GPU so it was super slow and laggy. Then I switched to Blender and was amazed at how much more I could push large projects for free!

Hi Jonathan, I’ve been 3d printing for about 2 years. I got bit by the bug because I have always wondered how things work and I’ve been fascinated with additive technology. But this is the area that has left me stifled! I started with TinkerCad and have a good grasp of it. I have been able to do a lot of projects with it. But,in my research, I have become more and more confused about where to start to improve upon my CAD knowledge. I know that I want to go open course but every time I turn around everything is changing. Heck, in only less than a year, I’ve seen your channel expand on several changes. Part of what I see is that Blender and FreeCad aren’t as intuitive to learn as some of the other programs. I think you have convinced me that I need to start with Blender and I need to have you as my tutor!

There are times when NURBS-Based CAD is the better option and times when polygonal modelling is preferable. Generally polygonal modeling is best for VFX, organic objects, or rapidly trying out ideas. CAD is better with simple surfaces intended for manufacture, having more features to manage such projects. Notably, nurbs give much better boolean-type workflows, where you just add basic shapes together and don't have to worry as much about geometry issues. Fillets/bevels/chamfers are also much cleaner in CAD, creating one generates a clean nurbs-surface to work on instead of many many small polygons. One example I have is that I was trying to turn some simple .svg designs into 3D-printable pins. Dead simple object, little complexity, and nice clean vector curves. In blender this required a lot of fiddling around with the imported curves, and no matter what I did I would get geometry errors trying to boolean pieces together; Non-Manifold geometry, internal pockets where bool operation generated errors, free-floating points and edges. Was a mess, I spent over two hours cleaning it up. Text is even worse, even using blenders internal text tools. With Cad I was just able to create a boss feature of each curve and the bools just bloody worked. In this case Blender was actually the one with a barrier to creativity. I've also tried doing 3D printables in Blender with lots of holes for screws and things, it's doable, but without constraints it's hard to get accurate placement on multiple parts, and going back to modify them or just get the diameter of a hole can be a PITA. There's a case to be made for learning both, they are different tools with different strengths and weaknesses.

Blender is wonderful, really amazing , and it is multi/purpose and free, but I think blender's main purpose is artistic and gaming stuff , and if you are focused more on industrial design, product design/manufacturing, then learning CAD first is the best option, I think. I like how CAD makes complex hard/surface modeling easier, but I would love to see blender having more and more CAD-like tools.

You forgot one thing: If you want to remix something, often you have to deal with only the STL mesh. In Blender you can easyly grab some vertices from the original and start your own remix from it. I think this is much easier/quicker, then a CAD workflow would have been. It is defenitly a good thing to know the pros/cons of both worlds and decide per project, what to do. And you are right: Mesh modeling first, because it shows you the fundamentals.

Most CADs have loft. Solverspace doesn't. Which means CAD Sketcher doesn't. Even fan-favorite FreeCAD has it. Bridge edge loops from blender are fun, but it means leaving domain of non destructive parametric editing. With CAD sketcher adding to the mix you need to know at least 3 workflows and their limits: cad sketcher, polygonal modelling, geometry nodes. Blender is not at houdini level yet, but more it pivots to everything-is-a-node, less you can avoid learning them at least at basic level. And it's without using other addons or learning e.g. destructive vs non destructive modelling As you can transfer knowledge from CAD sketcher to CAD, the same can be done the other way. Which means learning e.g. FreeCAD first means you can apply all what you learn to CAD sketcher if you want. But if you don't want - you already have a tool with lesser learning curve(as far as modelling concerned) than blender. I don't like FreeCAD and no longer use fusion, but I definitely don't regret learning their basics.

I actually found your channel because I checked out the comments section of the first vid in the teaching tech series to see what other options were available, and wound up subscribing while looking *specifically* for more about cad sketcher. I have been doing mesh for a long time and saying "one day I will pick up cad." Being somewhat familiar with blender I was immediately interested in cad plugins for it by the nature of simply having totally overlooked that being an option. At the very least it offers the basic functionality needed to design practical parts for anyone who is already familiar with mesh. As an aside the "minor caveat" that Michael of teaching tech mentioned about open shape -it's only free if your designs are public- was more consequential to me than it is to him. I'm all for uploading files of that one part that breaks on expensive object so everyone can print it too, but if I am instead designing precise parts as custom detail bits for scale models, minatures, joints for figures, and whatever, well... I might want to use mesh tools as well, or sell the results, or not own the IP im remixing, or various other reasons why a public file or pay model is simply not preferable. I also am quite sure an in browser program cannot possibly perform better than blender, but I suppose each still has its merits.

I was really debating this for the last few months (I even asked you on Discord to understand what the differences are) and I've kinda been going back and forth between Blender and FreeCad ( I'm a total beginner to CAD modeling, I have experience with blender, but much more broad than deep (I've played with most of the features in Blelnder)). I feel now, with my experience with the Blender UI and interface, and just again and again coming back to the idea that, blender just has a lot more to offer than any other piece of software (in terms of capabilities). I mean I started with blender because there was a really simple addon to create a 3d mesh of google maps terrain, so I easily made one for our land. I then got into vfx and that whole scene, with creating entire set extensions relatively simply , to add to any shot, including the compositing and rendering done entirely in Blender ( I opened Nuke once, which I understand has much better compositing than Blender, but again, i got a bit overwhelmed from learning yet another new program. Basically, I keep coming back to Blender, having way to much to offer once you learn it's different skills. You can do it all in house. It's amazing! So, now I'm going to back to watching your Blender precision modeling playlist, and finally finish modeling the motor mount for my plastic extruder to start making my own Filament!!!

I am coming from years of cad like Fusion and i love the opensource side of blender. The real big problem in blender is the ease of use. It's not so polished like the other software, and it's not the easiest to approach. The thing i love about blender is that is being opensource is compatible to alot of tools. like is VR native, you can export models to AR on the smartphone to check end results. 100% if i had to start from now i will go with blender but changing from a "real" cad is really hard expecially the controls.

I would recommend that anyone starting out download Blender and Fusion 360 and learn both. If you need a mechanical part or something with precise dimensions, use Fusion. If it's something artsy, use Blender. There's tons of tutorials on both to get up and running quickly. I don't think there's any need to settle for an inferior workflow. CAD and 3D modelling are different for a reason. Use both!

I started learning CAD over 20 years ago during my engineering studies, and spent years as a mechanical design engineer (Autocad, Inventor, Solidworks,...). 3DSmax existed but was never an option for all the reasons you mentioned. But now, with me diving into 3D printing, I found Blender impossible to work with. I just can NOT wrap my head around it. Like my mind is wired completely differently. I do really want to learn it though... So yes, I understand your point of view... :) I will be looking into that add-on :)

Well said. This point also applies to more than just those doing 3D printing.

I'm an aerospace engineer, we had to do some CAD in uni. But I absolutely love Blender and mesh modeling in general, there's nothing I would trade for what I've learned in Blender. It's just amazing.

Funny that I found this video…been learning Blender (from you) for the last few months. I started learning FreeCAD and then abandoned it completely to stick with and dive to the depths of Blender. Thank you for all you do.

I think this is a bit of a false dichotomy: In 3D printing, it's not about nurbs vs. mesh - because even with nurbs, we're exporting to STL anyway… It's more about CSG vs. BREP vs Sculpting. And those have different target audiences and problems, so it's not an either/or. I also think you might underestimate 3D printing a bit. Stuff like fillets or chamfers can make a big difference for printability or stability of parts, clearances and print-in-place mechanisms pose requirements completely different from traditional manufacturing. So "just" 3D printing can in fact require quite advanced CAD techniques. When I came to 3D printing, I started with OpenSCAD, but quickly found my self wanting a more visual / more measurement driven workflow (i.e. sketches). FreeCAD is just as open source as Blender is, and for people creating functional parts (like Teaching Tech or me), the "skillset translates well to game dev" argument is probably much weaker than "translates to CAM in other software packages". Or to more directly answer your question: No, I don't want to learn a tool which does "80% of everything 3D printing". I rather want to learn the right tool for the job. And I absolutely don't mind being "shut off from creative processes for resin printing" as I don't have a resin printer and no interest in sculptures and figurines.

I started in Blender around 8 years ago and after a rocky start (steep learning curve) I'd say I can create almost anything now, including sculpts. I recently decided to design and build a CNC machine, and found accurate modelling in Blender a little tedious. For the past year or so I have tried to learn CAD, but it has done nothing but frustrate me. For example I'll try to model an 80x200mm T-slot profile aluminium extrusion, and my machine will lag or crash. In Blender I can easily model 5 million verts without any issues. I’ll definitely give CAD Sketcher a go and try to make the best of both worlds. Ps my profile image is a mesh model I created and rendered about 3-4 years ago now in Blender.

I've been using Blender for over 10 years, and have been 3D printing for almost 10 years, with tons of "precision modeling" and practical parts and assemblies making. CAD constraints are really cool, but if it doesn't fit with the Blender approach of objects, parenting, and object-constraints, it's not very useful to me. I want CAD Sketcher to really continue to learn and understand the benefits of objects and assembly in the Blender way. It's close. I hope it gets closer.

I absolutely love the core sentiment of this video. We need more of this philosophical rambling in the community. I have an Edexcel FND in art and design, 2x NCFE levels in creative craft, 2x Cert HE in Ba Hons Fine art, & 2x levels with C&G in Autodesk CAD, and have also studied animation and visual effects at degree level with a major in compositing. I've been playing with Cadsketcher recently and It's absolutely fantastic, yet listening to this with my background I feel there's a fundamental misunderstanding in the discourse and it's the very definition of CAD: Computer Assisted Design. Every element of blenders UI is CAD down to the core... mesh editing, geometry nodes, procedural textures, the modifier system... all of that is Computer assisted design no matter how you look at it.

I've tried to learn CAD, my brain just doesn't go that way. Now granted, I only tried with FreeCAD and that could be a limitation within itself. My brother in law has been an AutoCAD person. Shoot on my mom's side, have a lot of civil engineers, but it was a very windy day when the apple fell from that tree in my case I reckon. I noticed that someone said Ton was not really feeling making Blender for engineers and that may be the case, however that doesn't mean that add-ons can't get it more in that direction. That's the nice thing about open source as well, typically the ability for add-ons that the average person have created can add in functionality that doesn't exist (or enhance it if it does have some basic functionality already), now it will be hard to get it totally in the direction of a program designed for that task from the very beginning, but it does help with getting it closer to that task. Now, with 3D printing, depending on the individual model of printer that someone has, let's face it, they won't get the precision that even their base file from a CAD first program is giving them. So even if the bottleneck isn't the software, it may very will be the hardware. Which still results in less precision, regardless of how precise that base file is.

It depends on what you want to do and what you are ABLE to do. I for example consider myself to have a good spacial perception bur I have no eye for beauty and proportions. It would be hopeless for me to create anything organic but I am absolutely satisfied with the CAD-stuff I create and think that it is my (only) way of producing creative stuff which also is visually appealing. :)

Poly modelling requires so much more knowledge and understanding of mesh troubleshooting and topology, and it limits the design phase alot. I see alot of hard surface artists moving away from polymodelling to nurbs/cad for similar reasons too

Thanks for this! I want to 3D print patterns to cast repro parts for antique hit and miss engines. I don't have a printer,, don't know CAD, AND don't even know what blender is. But I'm going to check it out!

this is good advice. im pretty good with tinkercad but im outgrowing it quickly. i only need to make size gauges for work but they are getting a bit more complex. blender with this add on seems like the best way to spend my time

I need to get back to my Blender learning, this is even better news!

Good points Thanks for sharing your experience with all of us 🙂

I'm sticking with FreeCAD. Blender is a nice option.

I don't think we need to learn software to start 3D printing. Well, a slicer needs to be learned. I use FreeCAD for my modelling needs but thinking to learn sculpting in Blender too, to make prototype shapes I can't quite envision because I'm not good at that, and to model, you generally need to imagine the finished look, better from the different sides. Pulling from the sphere until it looks like something sounds easier for me. The main reason I haven't is the fact that Blender tutorials are a) all long b) all dark with lots of teeny tiny icons, does it not have tools to make them bigger and change the theme yet?

Best thing about blender: it just keeps expanding and getting more powerful, at an astonishing rate. How long before true NURBS CAD modeling can be done within blender? There's already a lot going on in blender that has nothing to do with mesh or that modifies mesh on the fly only after the fact. That can totally happen and I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone's already working on it. Or someone writes a much better beveling methodology within blender. A lot could still be done to remove or mitigate much of the drawbacks of mesh vs NURBS (and already has been done.)

Blender is good ... but for me it lacks - CAM (it took me a lot time to get things straight in freecad for me), - sheet metal, - techdraw (if you want to forward drawings). The best addon for Blender would be a FreeCAD addon!

Im working with company's which develops medical tool's. i have CNC, lazer cut, and 3D printer, i think fusion 360 still have benefits on blender when it comes to CNC and 4 axis laser cut of pipes, becose of the CAM options and the sheet metal disign. I really want to learn blender, becose it is so awesome, but there is still big difference between the two.

IMO you are using Blender on small(ish) models which is why it works for you. Blender struggles with large models such as buildings. Blender also has Ton at the helm who is very vocal about not developing Blender for engineers (he recommends FreeCAD whenever the issue is raised). Unreal Engine 5.1 is rumoured to have 'Precise Numerical Input' added to it's modeling. With it's Nanite ability it can easily handle larger models. Apparently Blender only has two people working on its modelling whereas Unreal has what is described as 'a small team working on modelling daily'. It's Geo Scripting will probably challenge Geo Nodes eventually. Omniverse is worth watching - it calls itself the 'metaverse for engineers'. It can do advanced CFD calculations extremely quickly and accurately. It is good for robot design.

I was surprised that Plasticity was not even a foot note here? How do feel about it now? Version 1.0 just out but no follow-up to your course? Just curious as to what happened to your opinion of it?

I have been exclusively 3d printing my own Blender designs, using mesh modeling, for 2 years. Once I get faster with cad sketcher, I might abandon mesh modeling. The only real advantage that cad sketcher offers me is scaling. It would interest me to know what other advantages it might have over raw mesh modeling, in the realm of 3d printing? Also, not mentioned, was that Blender also offers 2d animations, 3d animations, video editing, image-tracking, sequencing, etc. Great content, as always! 5 stars from my side.

Bro i have to say you are speaking the truth Blender has everything you could ever imagine from file format like STL GCODE FBX BPY even JSON and CSV Blender is one of the best CAD software you could ever imagine! also new addons and update.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Although, I haven't used blender but you make a great case for using a software that'll be more efficient and getting 80% of the work completed.

This makes a lot of sense. I'm stuck between dedicating my time to fusion 360 or blender because I'm planning to learn electronic fabrication and metal fabrication, so I worry blender modeling limiting me in those ways and finding out after learning. I also want to make game assets so fusion 360 won't work for me there, and blender modeling will. I think I'm going to learn both nerbs and mesh. I hope in the future something like placticity can help me export nerbs to blender. I think what keeps people learning blender for CAD is that they worry about spending time on something not knowing if it's going to work out in the long run for their needs.

I would suggest that rhinoceros cad is best for 3d printing exept that it is very expensive

I started many years ago with 123D design and recently been using Fusion360 free edition. But have been looking and playing with some other options. I needed to 3D scan a competition pistol grip which is mostly organic but has some high precision areas for mounting etc. So started to use blender and your precision modeling ideas This allows me to easily adjust and sculpt the grip but also make sure the precision areas still fit. It mostly works well although the meshes are sometimes messy and difficult to fix holes Plus like you said Blender is good for many other things. But this is not something I talk to my engineering buddies about.

Blender has really improved over the last few years. It has gone from a pretty confusing UI to something that's really great with some really nice add ons.

Nice to hear this, Also, i remember you said FreeCAD is a bit hard to learn, so i'll stick with Blender for now.

People all come in with different backgrounds. For me the low barrier entry was OpenSCAD. I looked at blender early on but was sold by the idea of OpenSCADs slogan "The Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller". I'd like to pick up blender some day. Probably after I retire (which is not that far off). I think OpenSCAD files are relatively easy to edit. The file size is small and they are essentially a description of geometry. A mesh on the other hand is for more difficult to manipulate. It is a big matrix of data rather than an abstract description of geometry. When one goes to edit a mesh the vertices are not necessarily in a logical locations for the addition of an arbitrary new feature. The existing vertices also don't necessarily have a logical density if a small feature is added. All this stuff one does not have to think about if one is working in the more abstract world of solid modeling. So, I don't think manipulating meshes is typically as clean as manipulating solid models.

As CAD sketcher evolves to be more robust, I'll actually be moving from CAD into Blender. Yes, I do need a CAD workflow for 3D printing. Because CAD workflows generate water-tight, SOLID models. Blender will _regularly_ create invalid geometry for 3D printing without being extremely careful. So while Blender is certainly capable of generating models that _can_ be 3D printed, solid modelers WILL be 3D printable. Blender users _regularly_ will intersect multiple distinct models, and those model intersections can confuse slicers. If you had a tutorial for quickly taking one of these extremely broken models, and cleaning them up for 3D printing - maybe this might be arguable, but you cannot intersect polys in slicers without them completely generating the wrong gcode for your printer. 3D printing REQUIRES a SINGLE, WATERTIGHT, OUTER mesh. That's more difficult to achieve in Blender once you get beyond the basic cube. Even Blender's Boolean tools regularly generate garbage geometry for slicing. Slicers are FRAGILE. They break at the smallest wrong thing in a 3D model. It's stupid to learn mesh modeling first for 3D Printing.

You are right. CAD is really limiting in many ways. Especially limiting your imagination. Mesh in general is a powerhouse when it comes to prototyping. Mesh modelling could also get some CAD-features, where you define Parameters in a table (variables) and then use those Parameters to define your Mesh. Parameters could be dependent on other parameters. Also Parameters could have allowed value ranges. This is not really CAD but it is annoying that it is missing. You could then change Parameters in the table and your Mesh model would adjust to it.

Let me know when Blender can do sheet metal.

I'd love you to do a Blender comparison of designing and printing a 3d printed RC model aircraft. The whole single wall with internal structure is incredibly interesting (and difficult). Fusion 360 is sort of workable with this but I'd imagine Blender could work too... I'd be interested in your opinion..

It's a nice idea, but unless I'm missing something the only way to learn this from from scratch (as I have no design/cad/blender experience at all) is to buy their courses? If I was currently employed and could afford their courses, I wouldn't need to be using free tools!

I started with Fusion 360. Although I love it and created some cools weapon props with, I wish I started with Blender.

I learnt Blender first. Then started using Fusion 360 and I've hardly used Blender since.

Meanwhile I've started learning Blender over the last week specifically because of CAD Sketcher. All the free CAD programs or the ones that have a "free" tier either limit what you can do (Fusion360), basically own your designs (OnShape + many others) or are an utter pain in the ass to learn (FreeCAD). Even the very basic stuff I've modelled so far I wouldn't mind trying to print just for the fun of it.

At the moment CAD in Blender is only attacked from one side. Basically from the CAD Sketcher side. But the Blender Devs could at one point when CAD Sketcher is somewhat stable have a look how THEY can improve the Blender side to make integration of CAD in Blender via CAD Sketcher much more elegant and efficient. Maybe the CAD Sketcher Devs could make a "wishlist" as to what they would like to see in Blender which would help them make the integration and CAD experience much smoother.

My blender knowledge is very limited so if anybody has a fast workflow, please share, it would be a great help. But what draws me back every time to cad is 'resolution/density' of the exported mesh so it 3D prints nicely, especially when printing large objects. Just take a simple cube with a cylindrical hole in the middle. A one minute job in cad and when you click the export to stl button you can easily set the tolerance for the mesh so it becomes very dense and smooth and it almost always just works. As far as my knowledge reaches for Blender the cube with the hole is as easy to make with a boolean, but the crap starts when you want a high res smooth mesh. Adding a subdivision modifier will give your boolean made hole ngons, you have to start using creases and most of my time I'm busy repairing my mesh, rather than creating something.

I say learn 3d printing first, then add CAD :D You can 3d print other smart designers' models for many many hours before you need to get into CAD. > but it's free, open source, you don't have to pay for anything to get started This is the fate of all software eventually. The "pro" software only stays worth paying for until open source rolls up its sleeves.

In 2023 when FreeCAD reaches 1.0 and the topological naming problem is solved, FreeCAD will rule it all.

FreeCad is really punishing, but it is way faster, even for beginners at creating stuff for 3D printing.

I don't use blender for cad because it has lack of resources.

CAD programs are over designed to 3d print users. But 3d print need precision many times, screw/gear/mechanical parts/etc.... I choose MOI3D to draw, it's simple to use. a simplify rhinoceros3d.

But why CAD sketcher is not available for all countries?

And what about CAD like assembly? I'm now very close jump off to blender from Autodesk Inventor... CAD Skatcher is really cool! But assembly... Hаve you any thoughts about?

It's what you like and know

To be fair, back when I learned CAD, Blender didn't exist. lol

Can you suggest me how to learn blender Cam you provide me link of course Please help If it's paid don't worry

I learned blender first and would rather do the opposite. Blender is more of a toy for individual developers. CAD software is a tool for designing complex products in large group of people. This is why companies use Solidworks or Creo and not Blender.

Learn a real CAD software if you want to make things that actually matter. Learn Blender with whatever addons if you want to make gimmicks.

im like 123

blender interface is horrible, none should be promoting it

Too much of your talking head and not enough “show me”… I’m not here for your ego podcast - I’m here to learn